Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first.

Hyperion offers both CDs, and downloads in a number of formats. The site is also available in several languages.

Please use the dropdown buttons to set your preferred options, or use the checkbox to accept the defaults.

Introduction

The power of love tells the story of a maiden who has a clandestine lover. Her seven brothers challenge him to combat because he has made love to their sister without ‘asking their rede’. In the fight that follows he kills the seven brothers and the maiden swears that even if he had killed her father she would not be minded to leave him. Grainger collected this ballad during his ‘folk-fishing’ trip to Jutland with the Danish folklorist, Evald Tang Kristensen on 25 August 1922. The singer, Mrs Ane Nielsen Post, remembered only the last verse. Grainger composed his setting for solo voice with instrumental accompaniment in a burst of inspiration during the period 3–6 September 1922 in memory of his mother who had committed suicide the previous April. Like many of Grainger’s works it passed through various guises, finally appearing as the first movement of his Danish Folk-Music Suite completed in 1928. Interestingly, a particular string sound is required in this piece, Grainger instructing the violas and cellos to change the tuned pitches of strings on their instruments. Of this work Grainger wrote: ‘Love’s sway is firm and ruthless. The tune and words of The power of love seemed to me to match my soul-seared mood of that time—my new born awareness of the doom-fraught undertow that lurks in all deep love.’

The eagerly awaited Hyperion debut of Alice Coote, one of the most distinctive mezzos of her generation, who together with the indefatigable Graham Johnson explores love in its many manifestations in a pageant of English song and poetry that inclu ...» More

Details

A green-growing tree in my father’s orchard stands,
I really do believe it is a willow tree.
Its branches twine together so close from root to top,
And so do likewise true love and fond heart’s desire in summertime.

Roger Quilter and the Australian-born Percy Grainger were fellow composition pupils in Frankfurt between 1895 and 1901; they were members of the so-called Frankfurt Group together with the composers Cyril Scott, Balfour Gardiner and Norman O’Neill. Grainger was initially a concert pianist of some renown but his passion for folk music, and folksong in particular, led him increasingly to devote his time to composition. The power of love is a Danish folksong (Kjæligheds Styrke, beginning with the words ‘Den stander en Lind i min Faders Urtehav’) which was gathered in Gjedop, Tam Soyn, Jutland in August 1922 by Grainger and his colleague Evald Tang Kristensen; the name of the singer who sang into the portable recording machine was Ane Nielsen Post. Grainger had completed his setting for voice and piano by early September 1922. The bleak grandeur of this music is a reminder of the Nordic inspiration that came into English song, first via Edvard Grieg and thence through Frederick Delius—as well as with much of Grainger’s own music. The brooding and dramatic opening bars of the long piano introduction, the stirring modulation into the second verse and the arrangement’s enigmatic conclusion are extraordinarily bold and evocative. The craggy landscape from which this music sprung and the doom-laden contours of much of the region’s literature seem masterfully evoked.

A green-growing tree in my father’s orchard stands,
I really do believe it is a willow tree.
Its branches twine together so close from root to top,
And so do likewise true love and fond heart’s desire in summertime.